conormulligan.com

So says the New York Times:

One person with direct knowledge of the phone’s design said Thursday that the iPhone 4 exposed a longstanding weakness in the basic communications software inside Apple’s phones and that the reception problems were not caused by an isolated hardware flaw.

...

The person said the problems were longstanding but had been exposed by the design of the iPhone 4.

I find this hard to believe. An exposed antenna which attenuates when bridged by one's hand is something that really can't be fixed by software¹, no matter how often Apple says so.

1. Unless of course I'm completely missing something, but this just strikes me as implausible no matter which way you look at it.